Forbidden Game IV: The Ascension
by pixxistixx4me
Summary: The Games are over and Jenny Thornton has changed. Julian is gone, and Jenny will never forget him, but can the darkness forget her?
1. Prologue

Forbidden Game IV:

The Ascension

Disclaimer: Yadda Yadda Yadda. You know that I own squat. If something is in here that you recognize, it probably isn't mine.

Author's Note: Yep. I'm being bad and starting another fic without finishing any of the others ones floating around in the forgotten bowels of my C drive. Ah well. 

Summary: The Games are over and Jenny Thornton has changed. Julian is gone, and Jenny will never forget him, but can the darkness forget her?

*   *   *

Prologue

_Wow... we're so high up… OH MY GOD!_ Jenny Thornton's mind shrieked as she plummeted from the plane, arms flailing and colliding with nothing but air. For a while, Jenny reveled in the fall, the sheer weightlessness and lack of control making the ecstasy complete. The sky around her was a piercing, merciless blue of a frigid December morning, and reminded her Julian. As did the falling. She always felt out of control when she was around him. _But, _she reminded herself harshly as the wind and gravity buffeted her from every direction, _He isn't a part of your life anymore. Sure he died for you, but he died so you could _live_, not moan and mope about him being gone. _And that was what she did. She would always care about him, always be grateful that he gave himself up for her, so she could live.

That was five years ago. The new-and-improved Jenny had done everything and anything to make her feel alive. Hang-gliding. Bungee jumping. Deep-sea diving. Snorkeling. Parasailing. Surfing during the hurricanes. Rock climbing. Mountain biking. Riding every roller coaster she came across. And now-

"WHY DID I EVER SIGN UP FOR SKY DIVING?! AHH!" she screamed wordlessly at the vague patchwork of ground that suddenly seemed so very _very_ far away. 

All of a sudden, the word _Perthro_ flashed into her mind. She smiled. It was the rune of gambling and chance, the cup in which the dice were cast, which was exactly what she was doing: taking a chance and hoping to come out alive.

"On three!" Two strong hands grabbed hers, one on each wrist. Dee and Tom, getting ready to pull the cords on their 'chutes.

"One!" Jenny let go of Tom's hand.

"Two!" Then Dee's.

"Three!" She pulled the cord, her body lurching upward as the wind caught inside the vast expanse of neon green rayon and bright blue synthetic fibers, keeping her from being spread a millimeter thin on the now not-so-distant tracery of rocks, roads, peoples' backyards, and of course, the concrete landing site. 

Dee was whooping loudly over the rush of December air, glad that the $150 fee had been put to good use. Tom was looking in awe about him, his hazel eyes hidden underneath the mirrored goggles obscuring the half of his face that wasn't bound with a thermal scarf.

The hair that had slipped from underneath Jenny's helmet was covered in brilliant, crackling silver-blue ice. So were her thick Gore-Tex gloves. 

Jenny didn't let the ice bother her anymore. Or the thick shadows that always pooled around her, pulling her gold coloring into startling prominence with the darkness. Ever since that last, fateful, life-changing day, shadows and ice followed her, like trembling slaves in presence of their Queen. Even in the scorching days of summer, she would always be surrounded by her own little cloud of coolness. Some people said she radiated coldness. They were a complete 180 from the truth. She cold radiated _her._

Dee was yelling something at her, her expression masked by the goggles and scarf. Jenny pulled her own scarf down and yelled back that she couldn't hear what she was saying.

"Your 'chute is snapping!" Dee screamed, sounding frantic. Jenny looked up, fear blossoming inside her. Real fear, not the artificial fear that comes from a roller coaster, because on a roller coaster, you really are safe, in your head. Your body just doesn't believe you. This time, though, her head _didn't_ know she was safe. The cords, the only things between her and being a pancake were slowly fraying, snapping one by one. She fumbled frantically for the pull-cord for her emergency parachute. The waxed and triple braided black emergency cord snapped off in her had, the plastic red handle glinting innocently in the sunlight.

Jenny screamed, shrieking profanities at the oblivious sky. In that instant, she knew she was going to die. It wasn't going to be at all like the cave, five years ago. This was going to be sudden, harsh, and instantaneous. None of this drifting about, chance of recovery shit, this was the real deal, and Jenny Thornton was going to be a faceless bloody mess on the fast approaching concrete. 

Her friends were panicking, the distance between them growing. She was speeding towards a rocky death, while they drifted, helpless, hundreds of feet above her. The crew below her was panicking as well, trying to inflate the emergency mat. The generator seemed to have frozen. 

_O God, I am going to be dead in ten seconds, _Jenny thought, strangely calm. 

A pair of strong arms wrapped around her, a shock of warmth in her ice-encrusted gear.


	2. Chapter One

Disclaimer: You guys know the drill. I don't own it, I'm broke, don't sue me… blah blah blah. I don't know why I keep writing disclaimers, cause everyone knows none of its mine. I think it might be because I like rambling at you people.

Author's Note: Woohoo! Second chapter! Yay! But seriously, what will happen to our beloved JenJen? Who the hell grabbed her? Has she really gone bonkers? Is she going to die? Read an find out…

*   *   *

Chapter One

When Jenny had asked Audrey, Michael and Summer whether or not they would like to go skydiving with her, Michael said something along the lines of, "I didn't survive the Shadow World to die from a faulty parachute cord! No way!" Audrey merely thought she was joking, but then she realized that Jenny wasn't. Audrey declined a little too fast for her excuse to be plausible. Summer, eyes wide, blatantly refused. 

One would think that Audrey, Michael and Summer would have gotten used to Jenny going off to go so something the old Jenny would have quaked at the thought of doing. The old Jenny, or Jenny version 1.0, would have sat quietly at home, writing or studying, while Jenny version 2.0 doesn't care much for idleness. A strange recklessness and restlessness has come over her as of late, like a very bad case of ADHD. Only not. She can never go a week without going after something new.

Jenny then posed the question to Dee and Tom. Dee was practically out the door and on the plane before she finished asking the question. Tom, his hazel eyes dancing, dipped her low to the ground and gave her a big wet one right on the lips. Afterwards, he accepted, a smug smile on his face. Tom had become much more demonstrative since their stint in the Shadow World as the group of humans that didn't know the meaning of the word "stupid." 

Jenny knew for a fact that Tom still had nightmares, but he never admitted them to anyone else but her. She knew that he sometimes woke up in the middle of the night, thrashing around, tangled up in the bedclothes, breathing as if he just finished a marathon. He would then call her, regardless of the time, just to hear the sound of her voice, however irritated and groggy. She would then hurry over, bearing a large thermos of brandy-laced hot chocolate, and attempt to calm him down enough to sleep. When the booze didn't work, Jenny often had to sing him lullabies to get him sleepy enough to drift back to dream – and hopefully not nightmare – land. Some nights, he was so shaken; all she could do was hold him. And some nights, that's all both of them wanted. 

Jenny never told anyone that _she_ still had nightmares about the whole ordeal. Nope, not even Tom. No one needed to know, simple as that. But despite all her attempts to quell the nightmares, blue eyes and shadows and icy doorframes still haunted the depths of her mind. But no one needed to know that. She felt like she was five all over again, in the aftermath of the whole basement business. She remembered her grandfather being sucked in by icy tendrils and bony, fleshless hands, dragged into the ice and the swirling darkness in the basement closet. 

The others seemed to be holding up relatively well. But then again, they've had five years and college between them and the Games. _Real life is here, we have our own lives to live, and high school is long gone, _Jenny had thought, as a sort of mental shield against the nightmares and what she knew they meant. Whenever the nightmares claimed her sleep at night, she would wake up, a scream on her lips, feeling like she were sixteen again, and in the midst of the second Game. But then rational thought came back to her, and she remembered that she had graduated from Carnegie Melon as valedictorian and Phi Beta Kappa, plus various other honors, and had her own condo in southern California, a scant five miles from the beach, a pet goldfish with the wonderful name of Jim and a little black kitten named Socks. The rest of the gang all came and hung out at her place during their vacation time from their various jobs. Jenny herself had started her own chapter of Big Brother Big Sister in her area, and owned a local arts supply store. Pretty good for a girl fresh out of college and no overgraduate degree. In a few years, she was planning on going to graduate school, and then off to see the world. That is, once she made enough money. And according to Michael, who was never very happy about her always tearing off after some new interest, she would be a lot closer to her goal if she didn't go and blow half her income multiple times a month.

Jenny knew there were many reasons for her recent fascination with extreme sports and thrills, and a few of them she wouldn't tell anyone. Ever. Since no one knew about the nightmares, she couldn't tell them that if she were dead tired every night before she went to sleep, she would sleep more deeply and the nightmares would subside. She had a feeling Tom was catching on to her theory, as he joined her more and more frequently on her jaunts. Even though he thought it was because of precisely the reason she told everyone: She was alive, and not being picked apart by Monkey-Man and Crocodile-Lips for all eternity, so she had every right to live as much as possible in the time given to her. 

But then, she went parachuting, and that time seemed a lot shorter then last she checked.

The arms around her were warm and solid, vaguely familiar, and covered in the rayon and polyester skydiving suit. She clung to the hands wrapped almost painfully close around her midsection, trying to draw herself into them to keep from being best friends with the pavement that was getting much too close. A sharp tug and a harsh zipping noise rang through her body, and distantly she recognized the release of the emergency parachute, the cords and vast dome of life-saving fabric stretched as it filled with air, and then she was drifting, the tatters of her own parachute falling down below them. 

Even though she now wasn't hurtling to the ground like an over-sized rock being pitched over the edge of a canyon, she was still going much too fast, because their combined weight of both her and her unknown savior. But it didn't matter much, seeing as how the ground was leaping at her from less then a hundred feet. She couldn't turn her head enough to get a good look at their concealed face, and the arms and hands were covered in the sleeves of a black diving suit and a pair of metallic-looking blackish silver Gore-Tex gloves. 

It came as a shock to her when the ground suddenly appeared beneath her feet, and the arms slowly slid from around her waist, as if afraid to let go, afraid she might still keep on falling, even though both of her feet were planted, if not firmly, on the ground, and landing crew lackeys running around panicking, as of they weren't programmed to deal with someone having their parachutes break, and then the emergency cord snap in half. 

As soon as the arms left her, she crumpled to the ground in a heap. Hell, she had a good enough excuse, because if almost being a road waffle from ten thousand feet up isn't a good enough excuse, no one ever had the right to collapse. The figure crouched down beside her, the ground crew still scurrying around, bringing her blankets and such, trying to herd her into the truck so she could warm up and they could get her checked over for shock, but she wanted to wait for her two airborne companions.

When the figure lifted the large mirrored goggles, Jenny gasped.

*   *   *

Author's Note: MUHAHAHAH!!!! I just *love* cliffhangers!!! They make me feel in control…

Thank you my wonderful reviewers!!!

Oh, and Lotus, I know. I gave up on Forbidden Dreams. It just started to piss me off. I mean, that was last updated, when? January? And I mean, come on! She broke down over a frickin' *Post-It Note!* Oi. I might revamp it if I ever get off my duff and actually read it over again. 

See you in Chapter Two!!


	3. Chapter Two

Disclaimer: *Sigh* I wish I could say I own them, but I don't. O well. C'est la vie. (Did I French-ize that right? *looks sheepish* if I didn't, let me know…)

Author's Note: *Looks around sheepishly* Uh… hi. Remember me? I'm the person who's really bad at updating… Umm… sorry? Please don't hurt me… *cowers in fear* Well, after a veeeerryy extended amount of time, here is the next chapter. 

This is perhaps the hardest chapter ever for me to get out. I just can't get into Tom's head cause we simply just don't *see* him that much in the series. Book one he's locked up in the turret, book two he's all distant and ignoring Jenny, and then he gets captured, and then book three he's locked up in the lighthouse until the last 25 pages of the book. So please, forgive me if my writing of Tom is a piece of trash. 

Hey Lotus, wanna be my beta? Your grammar/spelling/overall writing talent is much greater then mine. Let me know eventually. 

And on with the chapter!

*   *   *

Chapter Two

Tom and Dee, to say the least, were freaking out when Jenny's parachute started to break. When Tom saw Jenny's emergency cord snap off in her hand, that was it. He pulled out his ever-present Swiss Army knife, somehow, considering the diving suits were one-piece and zipped up the front, and slashed the cords on his own parachute, falling viciously fast as Dee screamed soundlessly at him from a growing distance. 

He could hear Jenny's screams getting louder as the distance between them closed, her body a tiny violet scrap against the brittle, unyielding ground that was beginning to get much too close for Tom's liking. Tom turned himself so his head was facing the ground, and his body was a vertical bullet of black and silver rayon speeding toward the ground much faster, now that the wind resistance wasn't so great. 

His vivid violet girlfriend was falling, but he was falling faster, beginning to make out the vague designs and streaks on her diving suit. In another few precious seconds, she was within his reach. He stretched his arms and grabbed her, pulling her bruisingly tight against his chest.

He heard her gasp, clinging to him as he ripped the emergency cord, jerking the both of them up sharply. He felt some of the tension leave her body, to be replaced by a violent shaking, tremors that ran through her whole body as she clutched at his hands, and for a startling instant, Tom thought that she wanted him to let go. But the ground was a more pressing concern at the moment, rushing up to meet them, a malicious, merciless sheet of solid concrete. 

Luckily for the both of them, the fall wasn't as short as it would have been. The parachute wasn't strong enough to hold the both of them at a safe speed, but it was a small distance, only about a hundred feet. Tom's feet took most of the shock of landing, making sure that Jenny was all right before he released his arms from around her waist. If she wasn't, Tom didn't think he could take it. They had shared so much, and she had always been there for him, most notably the nightmares. If he couldn't save her when she needed him the most, he would never forgive himself. Even after everything that had happened to them, she wanted to be with _him, _little human Tommy, even when the world was offered to her, anything that she wanted, she could've had, and in Tom's view, she deserved, and she passed it up, along with the velvet-and-silver Julian, that wicked and deadly Shadow Man with the too-blue eyes that still haunted Tom's dreams in the deeps of night. 

Tom shook himself, deciding that thinking about Julian in a crisis would certainly bring bad luck. He removed his goggles and knelt down beside his shaking Jenny. When she looked up, he heard her gasp. "My God, Jenny, are you alright?" he asked, holding her close, ignoring the frantic landing crew. 

"Tom? Oh God Tom!" she gave a wild half-sob and buried her face in his chest, her body wracked by tremors. 

Dee, still airborne, heaved a huge sigh when she saw Tom and Jenny land relatively safely. Still, she was anxious to see for herself if Jenny really was okay. And figure out how in hell Jenny's parachute lines and the emergency cord managed to snap in such a convenient period of time. Something about all this was starting to look fishy… Every time Jenny went off on one of her wild excursions that involved heights, something went wrong. Last summer when they had all gone to Six Flags Magic Mountain and waited in line for hours to go on X, Jenny's safety harness wouldn't lock properly. If she hadn't been holding on to the metal handlebars so tightly, she would have been catapulted halfway across the park from 250 feet up in the air. When they, well… Jenny and Dee, had gone rock climbing six months ago in the Sierra Nevada mountains, Jenny's pick had snapped in half in her hand when she had barely even wedged it into the rock. They were over three hundred feet up on an almost vertical cliff-face. 

Still fraught with worry, Dee didn't notice the beautiful view on the remainder of her trip earthward. When she landed, she, taking her cue from Tom, ignored the landing crew and made a beeline for the shaking couple kneeling on the frigid landing site. She knelt down and wasn't surprised that Jenny didn't look up when Dee wrapped her arms around her. 

_Oh god… ohgodohgodohgodohgod… Not again, no not again… Why do these things always happen to me?! _Jenny's mind wailed as she tried to burrow her way through Tom's chest. 

None of them noticed that the shadows around Jenny had grown thicker. What was even stranger was that the shadows were still there even after clouds had covered the sun. 


End file.
